Hefazat to hold grand rally at Cox's Bazar on Rohingya crisis

The radical Islamist group Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh will hold a grand rally in Cox’s Bazar on October 6, demanding an immediate stop to the violence perpetrated against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Azizul Haque Islamabadi, central organising secretary of Hefazat, confirmed to Dhaka Tribune on Saturday that the group wants the Myanmar government to take back the Rohingya from Bangladesh and ensure their Myanmar citizenship. “Hefazat Ameer [Allama Shah] Ahmad Shafi called for an urgent meeting with the organisation’s top leaders on Saturday and urged them as well as the Muslim community to participate in the rally,” he said. “We will also build temporary sheds, set up tube-wells, mosques and sanitary toilets for the Rohingya refugees. We are urging the world community to boycott relations of all kinds with Myanmar until its government ends the ongoing atrocities against them,” he added. Junayed Babunagari, secretary general of the Qawmi madrasa-based radical Islamist platform, among others, attended the meeting, in which the group’s top brass blamed Myanmar for the “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya in Rakhine.